How to sell a country: the booming business of nation branding | News | The Guardian

Lipetsk is already on the map: right there, on page 23 of the Collins World Atlas, a region of 1.2 million people, dead south from Moscow and not far from the border with Ukraine. But its not really on the map : it doesnt feature in the slim mental atlas most of us carry in our heads; no one we know takes holidays there, and it doesnt appear in our newspapers. Even in Russia , people may fail to place it. In September, when Natasha Grand was passing through Moscow on her way back from Lipetsk, she told a Russian acquaintance where shed been. I dont even know where Lipetsk is, he replied, only partly in jest. Some Russians confuse it with Vitebsk, which is in Belarus.